loved ones, including even his father and aged mother"; and this is so clear, that corrections have been proposed to get rid of the difficulty. But the truth is that according to the bargain none was admissible except the family of Admetus. What the Fates promised was, in the words of Euripides, that Admetus should escape "if he gave another corpse instead of his own to those below".[1] This does not mean "if another person would die instead", but something much more precise. The language used refers to that simple conception of 'the other life' according to which the dead were not ghosts at large in another world but persons 'living' together in the burial-place where they were put. Antigone in Sophocles uses similar language, and assumes the same conception, when she says, as a reason for giving funeral rites to her dead brother even at the cost of offence against the living, "I shall rest a loved one with him whom I have loved, sinless in my crime; for it will be longer needful for me to please those below than those here: there I shall lie for ever".[2] The persons described as those below, to whom Admetus is to give another corpse instead of his own, are those who, his hour being come, are entitled to his company, that is to say, the dead of his family. The death of a person of another family, who would be buried with his 'loved ones', in a different burying-place, and worshipped with other and alien rites, would be no compensation at all. Now it happened that at the time Admetus' whole family (excluding his young children, who of course could not consent, nor be sacrificed) consisted of his father, mother, and wife. He applied to all of them, "all his loved ones" as Euripides says, and only his wife would consent. Thus, and thus only, can we understand the freedom with which the Chorus, as well as Admetus, assail the selfishness of the father and mother. No one else had refused, because no one else was admissible. The modern misconception has arisen from the brevity with which the story, being familiar, is told in the prologue, and from our want of acquaintance with the religious beliefs and formularies presupposed. However this is a small matter and a side-matter. Let us return to the main issue.
